July 11, 2025
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5 min read
In 2026, the first impression someone has of your business is your website.
The problem is that many are stuck in the past, featuring outdated design choices that overlook critical UI and UX elements essential for keeping modern clients and customers engaged.
Google’s own research indicates that 53% of mobile users will abandon a site if it doesn't load within 3 seconds—and that research is from 2016.
As technology advances and online competition increases, it's easy to imagine how much customer expectations have risen since then.
To put it simply...
If your website isn't adhering to standard website design practices, it is almost certain that you are losing traffic, leads, and business as a result.
So, how do you know if your website is an outdated relic with bad design?
What That Looks Like: Complicated menus, hard-to-use or hidden navigation bars.
Why This is a Problem: Landing on a website with confusing navigation is one of the first things that will frustrate your potential client.
In fact, poor website navigation has been proven to increase bounce rates and reduce conversions, with a 2024 study by GoodFirms reporting that 61.5% of users leave a website due to bad navigation. The bottom line is that when visitors can’t easily find what they’re looking for, they will leave.
How to Fix This: Simplify your menu by sticking to 5–7 top-level items with clear, familiar labels, so users can quickly understand where to go.
(Check out the home page of our website below to see what a simple navigation looks like)
Keep your navigation bar visible, especially on desktop, and avoid tucking important links into hamburger menus where they’re harder to find.
What That Looks Like: Your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
Why This is a Problem: Slow load times give potential clients a horrible first impression, reduce trust, and hurt your conversion rates.
Common culprits include oversized images, bloated code, unoptimized videos, and outdated third-party apps (we’re looking at you, WordPress).
The problem is that many websites created five or more years ago weren’t built with performance in mind, and this technical debt is evident in the user experience, especially when it comes to site speed.
How to Fix This: Quick tips include compressing and resizing images on your website, switching to modern file formats and reducing bloat by removing any unused code or outdated plugins. If you're using videos, host them externally (like YouTube or Vimeo) rather than directly on your site.
Inside Tip: Not sure how fast your website is? Use this free website speed tool to audit the loading time of your website.
What That Looks Like: Using different fonts, inconsistent colours, unclear tone of voice, random stock images, and broken social media links.
Why This is a Problem: Inconsistent branding confuses your audience and (harsh reality check, here) makes your business look amateur.
People are less likely to remember or feel connected to your brand if it looks and sounds different every time they see it.
How to Fix This: The quickest way to fix this is with a brand guide.
This essential resource in your business will detail your brand fonts, colours, logo usage, voice, and imagery style.
Make sure everyone on your team has access to it and that it's applied across all your platforms, including your website.
What That Looks Like: Text is too small, buttons are hard to tap, images don’t scale, and users have to pinch and zoom to navigate your website on their phone.
Why This is a Problem: More than 60% of website traffic now comes from mobile devices, so if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re instantly frustrating the majority of your new visitors.
Not only will people leave your website quickly, bad mobile performance also impacts your Google ranking, especially since it’s a key SEO factor.
How to Fix This: Your website needs to be fully responsive, meaning it automatically adjusts to different screen sizes and devices.
Using a modern website platform (such as Webflow), optimizing buttons and fonts for touchscreen displays, and testing your site on various devices will quickly show if your website meets basic standards.
What That Looks Like: Your website is crowded with too many competing elements—heavy text blocks, multiple banners or images, icons, etc.
Why This is a Problem: Cluttered layouts overwhelm users and increase bounce rates.
Research backs this up, with 56% of mobile users leaving landing pages that feel too busy.
A well-designed website will guide your eye and actions to the elements you want your customers to focus on.
How to Fix This: Focus on simplicity and clarity. Use white space to create breathing room and reduce the number of elements competing for attention.
(Check out the examples below from some of our website clients on how to reduce clutter and create a modern look and feel).
Limit each page to one main goal or message, and use clear visual hierarchy—through font size, colour, and layout—to guide the eye.
The Short Answer: Yes.
The Long Answer: If your website is cluttered, slow, outdated, difficult to navigate, or lacks consistent branding, new visitors will likely leave before ever considering working with you.
If you’re not seeing the results you want, it might be time to ask yourself: Is my website helping my business, or holding it back?
Also Read: Our Expert Brand Designer Breaks Down 7 Principles of Good UI Design
This is a hot topic around Spark and Pony Headquarters, and we’ll tell you why.
We have been in the website design space for a long time and have seen a lot of bad websites that have good intentions.
The problem is that a lot of businesses invest in their website once at the beginning and then leave it.
And we get it.
A website is a significant financial investment that you don’t want to have to keep sinking budget into.
But if you take a look at your website years later and it fails to pass the bar on any of the measures we just listed, you need to be realistic.
The harsh reality is that competition online has never been intense and SEO is changing with AI, meaning website traffic is down overall.
So, do you really want to chance losing a new visitor because you don’t want to invest in updating your website?
The choice is yours, but we believe that a website is an investment that requires proper care.
Ignoring your outdated website with bad design could be costing you more than you think.
Spark & Pony Creative is an Edmonton-based Website Design Agency helping complex businesses communicate effectively online.
Have questions about strategic web design? Follow us on LinkedIn, check out our blog for tons of free resources, or better yet, book a meeting and let’s chat!
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